I thought I might relate to whoever is interested a little about my past history.

Back in late '94 I had started posting predictions on the newsgroups. First ca.earthquakes and then later sci.geo.earthquakes when it got thru its RFD. At that time, there were many seismologists, geophysicists, geologists, and other "ists" that participated quite extensively. Among these were Richard Steed, Andy Michael, Susan Hough, Lucy Jones, Kate Hutton.

In January '95, Alan Jones then offered to monitor the predictions that were being posted to the newsgroups and presented a preliminary method to do this with. It was met with a lot of discussion about why this and that wouldn't work and finally most people agreed to the method that Alan uses now.

During '95 Alan monitored Bob Shannons and my predictions and then in late November '95 Alan declared that my process had become statistically significant and he closed with something like, "Where do we go from here".

Alans comment caused a really big discussion among all of the elite participants of that board where most of the discussion was centered around doing other kinds of tests such as double blind tests. Alan really got tied up defending his method of evaluation. This went on until late January '96 when I had recorded a miss that dropped my process below being statistically significant making the whole discussion a moot point. At least for the time being.

I suppose my whole point for writing this is to show that after becoming statistically significant, people couldn't/wouldn't accept it. I also wasn't contacted by any governmental agency in order to start some kind of dialogue up about it.

I was privately emailed from time to time, prior to becoming statistically significant, by some of the seismologists who offered their assistance as far as improving on the prediction formula and who kind of cheered in the background (which was nice of them).

I suppose that they were waiting to see if I could continue going on with being statistically significant. But then, how much is enough? That is something that is never talked about. I do know that some are waiting to see if I can predict a large quake close to home. But then, where would things go from there if I did.

I just really have my doubts about governmental agencies wanting EQ prediction. There are probably many other reasons for this mentality as well.

Dennis